Wel­come to Heretic Fri­day, or as I pre­fer to call it, HERetic!  Based on a recent reader sur­vey, I have been spot­light­ing a dif­fer­ent per­son or person(s) each week who cham­pion for the equal­ity of women in the world of church. It is my hope that the spirit of equal­ity that reigns strong in these women (and men) will be a con­ta­gion at this blog. I am look­ing to infect as many  peo­ple as I can with the idea that the unequal treat­ment of women in the church are acts of injus­tice and not just bib­li­cal man­dates doled out in the name of God. The peo­ple I high­light in this weekly col­umn are those broth­ers and sis­ters who won’t main­tain a reli­gious sys­tem marred by dis­crim­i­na­tion.  I am inspired.

This week’s HERetic of the Week is Kathy Esco­bar of Arvada, Col­orado.  Kathy is an author, blog­ger, pas­tor, speaker, teacher, wife and mom and friend.  I have known Kathy for about five years, hav­ing first met her at an Off the Map event in Seat­tle, WA that Jim Hen­der­son used to orga­nize. She instantly won me over with her dis­arm­ing per­son­al­ity and be real per­sona.  As I“ve got­ten to know Kathy over the years, one of the things that I have come to admire the most about her is her ded­i­ca­tion to serv­ing women and help­ing women become empow­ered in who they are. In fact, right now Kathy is facil­i­tat­ing an online course titled, Ex-​​Good Chris­t­ian Women’s Club. Reg­is­tra­tion is already closed, unfor­tu­nately, but here’s a link for your future ref­er­ence. I’ll try to announce it next time she offers it!)

This is just the sort of thing Kathy does : she gath­ers together hurt­ing women and helps them along on their jour­ney of heal­ing. God knows that there are many women limp­ing along who have had their iden­tity crip­pled by reli­gious mes­sag­ing. Kathy is fiercely com­mit­ted to help­ing women recover their iden­tity as human beings made fully in the image of God. Orga­niz­ing sem­i­nars is one way, but it is the befriend­ing of women, one cup of cof­fee at a time, and lis­ten­ing to the sto­ries that women need to tell, where Kathy’s spirit of heal­ing shines.

One of the most promi­nent ways Kathy cham­pi­ons for women is in her own com­mu­nity, The Refuge, an eclec­tic faith com­mu­nity she co-​​founded and co-​​pastors with her friend, Karl Wheeler. By liv­ing out loud and with trans­parency the strengths and hard­ships of copas­tor­ing a com­mu­nity with a non­tra­di­tional lead­er­ship model, Kathy is help­ing to pave the way for more women lead­ers to find their way in the body of Christ. When her years at a megachurch became sti­fling and stunt­ing, Kathy embarked on find­ing a way to have com­mu­nity where it didn’t mean you had to hide who you were . That’s how she and Karl planted The Refuge, a messy yet lovely band of folks who do not debate whether or not women can lead. Women just are, and so are men. Their is no ambi­gu­ity or doc­tri­nal side­step. Women are free to be fully human and fully woman and the Holy Spirit is free to use and speak through whomever he will. Gen­der does not disqualify.

That makes Kathy a hel­luva a heretic.

Besides lead­ing and pas­tor­ing, Kathy is also a pro­lific blog­ger and has gained a faith­ful read­er­ship dur­ing her years in the blo­gos­phere. Her blog­ging voice is uncom­pro­mis­ing as is her real-​​life voice:

“we let women…”

i’m sure many of you have heard – or said – some vari­a­tion of this (i have said and heard both in all kinds of shapes & forms over the years): “we let women lead”, ”they let me lead”, “it’s so great that my church lets women lead.” “our church let a woman speak this week­end, isn’t that cool?”

i com­pletely get the vic­tory that hap­pens when women are some­how freed, and that always makes me happy.

but these state­ments also make me cringe. like really cringe. and unfor­tu­nately they are so com­mon that we accept them as progress, as some­thing good.

but when peo­ple say it like this, it is reveal­ing to what is going on under­neath – and the telling assump­tions that exist.

it tells a story that we often want to min­i­mize – a story where men hold all of the power to “allow or per­mit” women to do or not do cer­tain things.

a story where patri­ar­chal sys­tems & struc­tures & influ­ences trump the full­ness of God’s spirit-at-work-in-women’s-lives.  it’s a story that we’ve accepted as okay somehow. and it’s not okay.    - kathy escobar

Kathy is way famil­iar with how not ok the story of “let­ting women” lead is.  She has felt the

I’m in the mid­dle between Kathy on the left and Phyl­lis Mathis on the right. Phyl­lis co-​​facilitates classes with Kathy. They are cur­rently run­ning a sem­i­nar called The Ex-​​Good Chris­t­ian Women’s Club. Yep. I know. I wish I’d known about it sooner, too!

brunt of dis­crim­i­na­tion her­self when a newly pub­lished book was pulled off shelves when the dis­trib­u­tor (Life­way?) real­ized she was a pas­tor. Nope. No women pas­tors allowed as that would be out of line with scrip­ture. In other words, Kathy’s book was banned from that net­work because Kathy was liv­ing a life of heresy.

There’s so much more to say about my friend Kathy, but I will wrap it up here — Kathy Esco­bar is a pas­sion­ate advo­cate for equal­ity and jus­tice. She lives it, teaches it, and inspires oth­ers to do the same.

Click image. Avail­able on Amazon.

Kathy’s lat­est book, Down We Go : Liv­ing into the Wild Ways of Jesus, is avail­able on Ama­zon in print and on kin­dle. I highly rec­om­mend it!